ing me to take care the next time we met lest I should prove to be "in the same boat with Robinson and Fellowes," and with a half-earnest declaration, that of late he was beginning to suspect "some bottom of reason" in primitive consensus, and even in the "venerable old bug-bear" of Church authority, we so parted for the night; I, to study out the question, whether 1 Tim. iii. 15, might not be much improved by a new punctua tion, he, I sincerely hope, to court "kind nature's sweet restorer, balmy sleep :" for Harrington's brain has of late been considerably overtasked, and if he does not give it rest there is no telling what absurdity he may finally indulge in.

WHY CHURCHMEN LOVE THE LITURGY.

PEOPLE out of the Church are often wondering why it is that Churchmen have so deep and strong an attachment to their particular forms and order of worship; and the members of other religious bodies are to be heard, sometimes regretting, sometimes boasting, that there exists nothing of the kind amongst themselves. The ardent love that the children of the Church bear to their mother's words of instruction and forms of devotion, to some of our neighbours seems highly religious, to others of them not much better than idolatry; the latter not being well able to see how we can prize the means so highly, without having first virtually put them in place of the end. They perceive much to approve and admire in the ancient, long-tried provis ions and preparations of our Liturgy; but no such everlasting beauty or inexhaustible interest in them, that we should stand. to them and cleave to them so stoutly and so perseveringly; they can nowise understand what there is in them, that by long and frequent usage they should not become stale and wearisome. They therefore not seldom land in the conclusion that the matters in hand, with all their acknowledged beauty and excellence, have some latent aptness to generate superstition; and that the potent charm which they have over the mind, and which is rather strengthened than worn out by long custom,

must proceed from some other than a genuinely religious source, and be spun out of other than holy and divine elements.

Now, not to dwell on other considerations, it were surely an odd accusation against a teacher that he had the gift of rooting his instructions fast in the hearts of his pupils; or against a mother, that she made her children love to be with her, and have her words still sounding in their ears and upon their tongues, or that she so established her image in their affections that it should stand to them as the model and pattern after which all their thoughts of the beautiful and good were cut and fashioned. And doubtless much of the result in question grows from the fact that the Church, by her solemn still-recurring lit. anies and minstrelsies, causes the mind of her children

To be a mansion for all lovely forms,
Their memory to be a dwelling-place
For all sweet sounds and harmonies;

thus binding up the efficacies of grace with the invitations and endearments of nature. It may seem strange, it may seem wrong, to our neighbours, that such should be the case; but so it is they may think, and they often do call, us illiberal and exclusive, for not interchanging with them, and reciprocating their favourable thoughts, and speaking of their services as they are used to speak of ours; but the truth is, however good such channels of devotion as theirs may be to those who have no other, our feelings will not, cannot flow in them; they may see beauty in our forms of service, but we can see none in theirs; they have nothing that seems to us religious worship in comparison with our precious, time-honoured liturgies; and all that they have seems stale, flat, and unprofitable, after we have tasted the sweetness of these.

But, surely, instead of censuring either the Church for inspiring or her sons for imbibing such a deep and lasting affection for her services, we may well suspect some fatal defect, either in the mother, or in the children, or in both, where such affections do not spring up and flourish. For as there is nothing so rational and becoming and beautiful as returns of prayer and praise and thanksgiving to the GOD that made and redeemed us; so neither is there anything so attractive and endearing to man's heart, as such worship when rightly

ordered and expressed. So that we know not whether they are more to be pitied or blamed, who are without these most fitting and comfortable sentiments; or rather they are to be pitied, that they have not got, and blamed, that they do not seek, such forms and objects as are apt to kindle and cherish them. Nor can that society be reasonably expected to last, where the members have not some such matter between them to cement or weld them together, by inspiring them with a love stronger than that of their own discoveries and collections. Which is probably one cause why so many religious bodies of our time are now running or seem likely to run out and come to nothing. They often congratulate themselves, indeed, on being more open to spiritual influences, forasmuch as they have nothing visible or tangible to interest and occupy their thoughts; but who does not see that this very principle whereon they are built, and whereof they boast, must ultimately break them to pieces? that they must perforce crumble up and be lost in endless dispersion, because they have no common object or matter to overcome or withstand the dividing forces of self-love and individual opinion?

Now we know that waters which have to be always digging themselves new channels seldom run in deep and strong currents spreading out into a huge shallowness, they are soon absorbed away into the spongy earth. And so it is with our affections: amidst a continual rush of novelties and extemporary addresses, they can hardly choose but perish they must have permanent props and supporters to lay hold of and cling to, else they cannot well grow and climb: they always thrive best in the society of old familiar objects and faces: the same household words, which we have heard so long that we remember not when we begun to hear them, and the same maternal features, which we have looked upon so long that we seem to have always known them-these are the most natural and proper food of real affection; and it will still keep bidding us "sing aloud old songs, the precious music of the heart": in brief, it is our nature to love what we have long known, and to love it the more, the longer we have known it. So that there probably cannot be a shorter or surer way to kill off the religious affections, than by casting out all stated, stable forms

of worship, and continually varying our services with extem pore novelty and change. For how can they expect that we should ever be or ever feel at home, who roving among strange persons and places? cannot be, the order,

keep us perpetually

Surely such is not,

Whence grow the fixed delights of house and home,

Friendships that will not break, and love that cannot roam.

And it is when religion comes to us in a shape to be entwined and complicated with our deepest and dearest affections; when, marrying austere truth to beauteous forms, she yieldeth us In hours of weariness sensations sweet,

Felt in the blood, and felt along the heart,

And passing even into our purer mind,
With tranquil restoration;

that she becomes a living source as well of the comforts she offers us here, as of the more-than-comforts she promises us hereafter.

Doubtless the lack of some such provisions and preparations as those in question is the main cause of men's frequent strainings and pumpings, to get up feelings with which they have not fit objects or offices to inspire them. They want to be interested, try to be, and think they ought to be; yet they cannot be, for the simple reason that they have no forms adapted to interest them. And the result is, that some go to affecting an interest which they cannot feel, and endeavour to cant them selves into sincerity; while others are either driven to despair from want of an interest which they cannot feel and will not affect, or else they must needs resolve all religion into mortality, since they have no forms of worship wherein they can be

sincere.

NOTICES OF BOOKS.

The Doctrine of Baptisms. By GEORGE D. ARMSTRONG, D.D., Pastor of the Presbyterian Church in Norfolk, Virginia. New York: Charles Scrilmer, 377 and 379 Broadway. 1857.

This book is our first acquaintance with Dr. Armstrong. Written with a view to certain points now much in debate among Christians, touching the translation of the Bible, it is in plan and substance controversial: but its

tone and temper are eminently candid and inoffensive; there is not, that we can discover, a particle of rancour or bitterness in it; indeed controversy has seldom appeared in so kindly and amiable a form. Therewithal, the book is a very able, scholarly, and workmanlike performance; evincing much learned diligence, great earnestness and simplicity of purpose, and much strength and rectitude of logic: the style is clear, compact, and vigorous, the order and method skilful and judicious; and, all together, it is a calm, solid, handsome piece of work; moreover, viewing it in reference to the circumstances of the time, it is prudent and seasonable.

The motive and occasion of the work grew from some recent doings of the Baptists in the matter of translating and circulating the Scriptures. It is well known that the Baptist denomination has withdrawn from coöperating with other Protestants, and formed an "American and Foreign Bible Society," for the express purpose of translating baptizo by words answering to our immerse, in all new versions required for heathen lands. At its anniversary in 1840, this Society " Resolved, That by the fact, that the nations of the earth must now look to the Baptist denomination ALONE, for faithful translations of the Word of GOD, a responsibility is imposed upon them, demanding, for its full discharge, an unwonted degree of union, of devotion, and of strenuous persevering effort throughout the entire body." And in their Annual Report they denounce all translations but their own as " versions in which the real meaning of words is purposely kept out of sight; so that Baptists cannot circulate faithful versions, unless they print them at their own expense." After which they add, that "the British and Foreign Bible Society, and the American Bible Society, have virtually combined to obscure at least a part of the Divine Revelation, and continue to circulate versions of the Bible, unfaithful at least so far as the subject of baptism is concerned."

Nor has the thing been allowed to stop with the getting up of versions distinctively Baptist for use in heathen lands. As a natural consequence of the spirit with which this new Society pursued their work, there has since been formed a "Bible Union," for the purpose of setting forth a new English version of the Scriptures, wherein, among other changes, immerse and immersion are to be uniformly substituted for baptize and baptism.

All which, as our author justly remarks in his Preface, has given a great practical importance to the "translation question." It is chiefly with a view to the interests and consequences involved in that question, that the book in hand was written. And, as that question is now, and for some time likely to be, a prominent and somewhat exciting one, the undertaking cannot be well regarded as otherwise than timely and pertinent. The question is here discussed on purely Scriptural grounds, no arguments being made use of but what rest directly upon the text of the Bible. The author remarks, that, as the Word of God alone can bind the faith of the Church; so it is to that Word alone that the appeal is made in this treatise. In pursuance of this rule, every passage of Scripture in which baptize or baptism occurs, or which, the Baptist writers themselves being judges, has any bearing on the subject,